The Irish comedian Hal Roach once described Christmas as: “That magical time of year when all your money disappears.” And when it comes to disappearances, the first thing that most people notice about the Gospel of Mark is that it doesn’t have a Nativity story. No angels appearing to shepherds, no star, no wise men, no baby in the manger. Just a proclamation at the start – “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” – a quote from Isaiah, a brief paragraph about John the Baptist, and then Jesus as an adult seemingly just turns up to be Baptised by John. No magic, no mystery, no sense of occasion. It is this seemingly matter-of-fact approach by Mark that explains why many people have difficulty with his Gospel. Whereas the other Gospel writers present us with the Nativity story in its various forms, and add genealogy or history or mystical theology to underpin the point of their narrative, Mark does no such thing. Just the bland declaration about Jesus being the Son of God, buttressed by a prophetic quote, then – wham! – straight into the story of Jesus’ adult ministry.
You can see why Mark’s Gospel was neglected for so much of Christian history: it comes across as too bland, too insufficiently magical to capture our attention. But four centuries before Mark’s Gospel was written, the great Greek historian Thucydides articulated a concept which I think Mark follows closely. In the Introduction to his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote:
It may be that this history will be less popular because of the absence in it of a romantic element; it will be enough for me, however, if my words are judged useful by those who want to know that which happened.
In other words, Thucydides is more interested in reporting events as they occurred, rather than in adding what he called a “romantic element” – and which we would probably call a “magical element” – into his narrative. The only problem is, shortly after articulating this noble principle, Thucydides cheerfully admits that many of the great speeches which infuse his work are entirely made up; instead of being the words that were actually spoken at the time, he inserts speeches which reflect either what he thinks was said, or what the occasion was about. In other words, a speech was made; it’s just that it wasn’t the speech Thucydides records.
So Thucydides the scrupulous reporter becomes Thucydides the utiliser of poetic licence. Does this make him a liar or a hypocrite? Absolutely not, for Thucydides’ purpose was to record a truth that goes beyond the mere recitation of facts. Thucydides’ speeches give us a flavour of the social forces which existed at the time, as well as an insight into the motivations behind the parties to the conflict which he recorded. In other words, Thucydides helps us to establish context, even if the words which he attributes to various politicians and generals were never actually said: and in doing so, he provides us with a richer truth that the mere recitation of dates and battles and treaties would ever provide.
And I think a similar thing is going on in Mark’s Gospel. Because beneath the apparently bland surface of his rather straight-forward narrative there is a rich symbolism that points to a deeper truth than that which is verifiable through historical or scientific analysis. The fact that he begins his Gospel with the seemingly straight-forward but incredibly rich declaration that Jesus is the Son of God – and you should pay attention to the fact that this declaration is in the present tense – alerts us to this fact. And it is a reality which we encounter fully in Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism.
On the surface, the story seems simple enough. John is baptising by the River Jordan; he declares that he is not the Messiah, that One is coming who is greater than he is; then Jesus comes and presents himself to John and is baptised by him; and as Jesus emerges from the water, he has a vision in which the heavens tear open and the Spirit descends on him, while God says from Heaven that Jesus is the Beloved Son. Leaving aside the “magical” element of Jesus’ vision, the event is depicted in typically direct Markan terms: Jesus comes, Jesus is baptised, and, in the passage immediately following today’s reading, Jesus departs for the wilderness. Nothing to it, really.
Of course, it’s not quite as straightforward as that, because there is that “magical” moment at the end that needs to be accounted for. And the usual explanation is that this is Mark once again drawing on images from the prophet Isaiah to underline Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. In Isaiah 64, the prophets speaks of his longing for God to rend the Heavens and descend to earth. Isaiah 11 speaks of the Spirit anointing the Chosen One, God’s Messiah who is to be King over Israel. So the episode of Jesus’ vision is Mark’s way of saying that Jesus is the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophetic vision. Just as Thucydides used symbolic speeches to reveal the deeper social and political depths of the events he was recording, so Mark uses Isaiah to reveal those same depths about Jesus.
All of which is fine as far as it goes. Except for the fact that this episode is not just a matter of illustrating who Jesus is, but also about revealing the consequences of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah. The imagery in this passage is not merely symbolic: it points directly toward what is involved in the fulfilment of prophecy, in God’s faithfulness to covenant.
In the previous two weeks we have examined the significance of the Nativity for humanity and creation. On Christmas Day we examined the absurdity of Christmas and the joyous Good News which it proclaims: that through the humanity of Jesus, God is one of us, and one with us, in every sense of the word. Last week, we explored the “flip side” of the Nativity: how, through our adoption as Children of God, we are taken up into the life of God through the divinity of Christ, our broken human life transfigured into a fully human existence within the life of God. And in today’s reading, Mark brings these two halves of the Christmas narrative together, revealing Christ as the fulcrum through and in whom Heaven and earth are joined, in and through whom we are baptised into a new birth. For make no mistake about it, today’s passage from Mark is a Nativity reading.
Let me say that again: today’s passage from Mark is a Nativity reading. No, there is no Mary or Joseph or angels or shepherds or wise men adoring a child in a stable. But that is not what Nativity readings are primarily about: rather, they are about Jesus’ identity as the One who redeems broken human existence, who both breaks the eternal Heavenly realm into earthly existence, and who raises mortal earthly existence into the eternal being of God. And this is what Mark does in today’s reading: and he does it by utilising some extraordinary birth imagery in his retelling of Jesus’ baptism.
Firstly, there is Jesus’ baptism at John’s hands. John has already declared the temporality of his baptism with water, of his unworthiness before the One who is to come, and of the Spirit-filled Baptism which that One will perform. But given all this, why does Jesus consent to be baptised at John’s hands? Precisely because this act is emblematic of the purpose of Jesus’ whole ministry: to claim ineffective human rituals for God and transfigure them into eternally effective symbols of the advent of God’s Kingdom. Just as Jesus claims our life and our death to transform both into the eternal life of God’s Kingdom, so Jesus claims the ritual of baptism and gives it a new birth of effectiveness; it ceases being a ritual and becomes instead a sacrament of God’s grace.
Next there is Jesus’ emergence from the waters of the River Jordan. Water has an ambivalent meaning for people who live in arid environments: on the one hand, it represents life itself, replenishment and renewal; but on the other hand it is a threat, a context in which humans cannot breathe, a place of smothering, suffocating death. So Jesus coming up out of the water again represents who Jesus is and what his ministry involves: life, replenishment and rebirth in the face of death; and emergence from death itself, life breaking through and out of those powers which cause death. Jesus enters the waters, claims its ambiguity for God, and emerges as the Water of Life itself.
But the most extraordinary image in Mark’s account is the dual representation of Christ emerging from the water as the Heavens break open and the Spirit pours down. For let us not be coy about this: water, and emergence from water, and tearing open, and Spirit pouring forth are all symbolic representations of the physical processes of birth. As the citizen of a rural society in which humans lived in close proximity to livestock, Mark would have been more than familiar with the processes of animal birth. And despite the taboos by which it was surrounded, he would have understood the human childbirth was not much different. So when he wanted to illustrate that it was in and through Jesus that humanity’s new birth of salvation was achieved, it would have only been natural for him to have used graphic, visceral – if symbolic – images associated with creaturely birth. But the very fact that these images are achieved through water and Jesus and Heaven and the Spirit tells us that this is not ordinary, temporary, mortal birth; rather, it is the birth of God’s Kingdom, the birth into eternal life. In Jesus, God claims creaturely birth, and transfigures it into a promise, not of eventual death, but of resurrection.
And all of this is achieved in the stunning image of Jesus coming up as the Spirit comes down: and at the point where they meet, Heaven and earth come together. Jesus is the fulcrum in which Spirit and flesh are unified in Christ. Jesus, today’s reading from Mark proclaims, is the One through whom God enters into human life, and through whom humanity is embraced by the life of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is present in the earthly realm precisely because the human person Jesus is also the divine Christ, the Son of God through whom God’s Spirit pours into the world.
So today’s reading from Mark is indeed about Baptism: but it is Baptism as Nativity, as birth and re-birth. But this is not being “born again” as this is understood in certain Christian circles; the new birth promised by Baptism is the transformation of our brokenness into fullness, not a requirement that we adhere to certain interpretations of Scripture. It is a promise made effective in the humanity of Jesus, and in his identity as the divine Christ. A promise which Mark illustrates in and through his own recounting of Jesus’ Baptism.
So don’t lament or go looking for the supposedly “missing” Nativity story in Mark’s Gospel. Unlike our missing Christmas dollars, Mark’s understanding of Jesus as the Nativity figure has always been there for us to read. For just as we are promised life anew, let us begin to see anew; and in so seeing, discover richness in what we once thought to be mundane.
